BLEATING ARTS
An immersive new art show about taking sides gives galler y-goers and goats alike something to chew on
FIRST came goat yoga, a joyfully pointless exercise. Now, it’s goat art.
For his new installation, running Saturdays through Oct. 20 at Chelsea’s Unix Gallery, artist Jonathan Paul recruited two live goats. Wearing different colored jerseys, they wander around an enclosure nibbling at bok choy suspended on strings. The strings are connected to piñata-like boxes. The first goat to nibble hard enough to open a box is showered with rose petals.
The piece is titled “To the Victor Belongs the Spoils.” And if you think it’s absurd to try and guess which goat will win — as gallery visitors are encouraged to do — well, that’s the point.
“How many times in your life have you been asked to pick a side when you don’t really know the purpose of it?” says Paul, who debuted the work in Los Angeles, where he’s based. “It’s about the folly in picking a side.”
He says the goats are an abstraction of the choices we make in our day-to-day lives, from which sports team we want to win to which political party we vote for. However arbitrary our choices, Paul says, “we have this desperate need to be right. That’s the folly of it all.”
The goats change each week, but they’re all from the same Nassau County farm. Paul prefers that they remain anonymous.
“If you knew [their] names or how old they were, you might start to form a bias,” he says. Choosing a goat by the color of its jersey, say, reveals the arbitrary nature of the choice he’s asking his viewers to make.
Paul says he considered other species. But “sheep are followers,” he says. “And chickens would seem like a completely different show.” Goats, he says, are “inquisitive, intelligent and stubborn” — just like many people. Similarly, they’re far from perfect.
“Last week, there was one that got aggressive and would head-butt the other,” Paul says. The goats in Los Angeles tended to be shy and less curious, Paul says. Here in New York, “we were worried they were going to jump over the [enclosure].”
Upper East Side curator Natasha Schlesinger stopped by the gallery recently to check them out, and plans to visit again with her 16-year-old daughter.
“They’re so cute,” she says of the goats. “And it makes you wonder: Why is life so complicated? Why are people so difficult about competition?”
Viewers can chew over those questions while watching the goats nibble their way to victory.
“It captures a fun spirit, but at the same time, it’s ridiculous,” Paul concedes. “You can win today, but that could change tomorrow.”